12 Conversations About One Thing
by Sir Exal
Summary: Postwar, post-marriage, after everything has settled down, there's one question that all of the couples created during the time of war will, eventually, have to confront. Here is how each of them handle the question of what to name their firstborn child.


12 Conversations About One Thing

Conversation 1 [In which the problem is outlined]

As the evening rapidly cooled the air, Vaike sauntered home. He felt like a million gold. A gang of punks and street toughs had attempted to muscle in on his neighborhood, either not believing or merely underestimating Vaike's battle prowess. One of the little hellions had even tried bribing him! One thing was for sure—you didn't underestimate the Vaike! ...Or, you know, you didn't do it _twice_.

He had cleaned all the blood off of him that he could, but there hadn't been much water in the punks' waterskins. Plus, when he had washed blood off his knuckles, he learned they had split on contact with some jackass's face—that was his own blood. It was always a little harder to remove, what with more oozing out. Vaike was looking forward to getting home and taking a long freakin' bath.

Vaike took a deep breath of twilight air—ouch, okay, that was probably a broken rib. Damn. Well, better get home all quicklike now.

Vaike enhanced his speed to a healthy jog. Well, that felt a lot better, he thought. And why wouldn't it, right? He had a good dinner, a soothing vulnerary, and, o'course, a loving wife to come home to. Vaike ran a little faster, but then slowed back down as his chest began to hurt again. Maybe just a jog was fine.

* * *

Just as the sun was disappearing behind the town's roofs, Vaike reached his hole-in-the-wall home, pushed the door open, and strode in. The house was impeccably clean, stew was simmering in the fireplace, and Miriel had been crying.

When Vaike had moved back to the sticks after the wars ended, he was worried that Miriel would find his village less than intellectually stimulating. He had been wrong on that count. Miriel had found the humble settings ideal to finally assemble her many findings in numerous papers. Yliesse's burgeoning postwar academic scene greatly valued her research, and gave Miriel and her husband a good wage for the theses. "Publish or perish," Miriel had been heard to say several times. It occurred to Vaike that there should be some third option.

Furthermore, Miriel's research did not ebb in her new surroundings. Indeed, she was able to continue her empirical studies and assist her adopted hometown in one swift stroke by paying the townspeople to participate in her experiments. The experiments were rarely dangerous and ususally enlightening, even to Vaike's less capable mind. Indeed, Miriel was every bit the woman Vaike had married.

And now, the Miriel he married was sitting at the dining table, her head in her hands, her glasses off, her ruby-red eyes bloodshot. Vaike wasn't the smartest of men, but he was observant, and Miriel had been sobbing.

Before he could open his mouth to answer a question, Miriel looked up. "Husband, you have returned!" she said, a tad obviously to Vaike's ears. Miriel replaced her spectacles on her face. "You are injured!" she shouted.

"Oh, yeah," said Vaike, "Some street toughs thought they were better'n me. I showed 'em straight."

"Do you have the scarcest of conceptions of how disconcerting this circumstance is?" demanded Miriel, moving to him and touching his lips. Her fingers came away bloody—Vaike's nose was bleeding. Huh, he hadn't noticed that.

"C'mon, babe, they only got, like, three hits on me 'fore I took 'em out."

"Irrelevant!" Miriel proclaimed. "The most ostensibly inconsequential of injuries can conceal lethal hemorrhages! Not to mention the risk of infection!"

Okay, now this was just plain cockeyed. Vaike had sustained worse wounds—_much_ worse—during his battles alongside Exalt Chrom and the rest of the army. Why was Miriel making such a big fuss? "Look, it ain't no problem. I'll use a vulnerary, wrap the scratches in gauze; I'm fine."

"You shall undertake no such actions!" said Miriel. She dashed to a cabinet and removed an old Mend staff. She had learned much of staff usage during her time as a royal Valkyrie. A moment later, Vaike felt the warm feeling of his wounds knitting, as well as the rib adjusting itself back into place. Ah, well, he wasn't going to argue.

Miriel replaced the staff in its proper place alongside the other staves, and turned back to her husband. "Now, cleanse thyself. Our repast shall be prepared when you return. And!" she added as Vaike headed for the waterspout, "Reestablish the lye in its designated place afterwards!" Vaike grinned.

After cleaning the dirt of the day off of his hands, Vaike returned to the table and sat down to his stew, across from Miriel. She smiled at him. After the needed benediction to Naga, Vaike dug into his food as a hungry boar would.

Miriel simply picked at her food, something that Vaike noticed, at least after his first few spoonfuls. He watched his wife for a moment. She occasionally lost her appetite, often when on a particularly difficult problem or project, and normally Vaike wouldn't have devoted a second thought to it. But Miriel had been crying earlier, and now she didn't seem to want to eat? Vaike's gut told him something was wrong.

"'Ey, what's up?" Vaike asked, "Something wrong?"

Miriel looked up. "No. Nothing, husband."

Now something was definitely the matter. "Hon, something's _so_ wrong. That was a lie, and ya _never_ lie."

Miriel gave a sad grin. "Obviously counterfactual, as I have indeed just attempted to prevaricate." Miriel adjusted her glasses. "I believe I have deduced the agent of my recent paroxysms of nausea and headaches."

Vaike devoured another spoonful of stew. "Oh yeah?" he said.

"Indeed." Miriel stood and began to pace. "Initially, I hypothesized that I had developed migranes, or some other malady of the cranium. But my condition did not exacerbate in the presence of bright light. In addition, my monthly cycle had ceased..."

Vaike always enjoyed when Miriel went off on one of these—whatchacallem—soliloquies. Sure, he didn't understand 100 percent of her monologue, but it was so uniquely her, and Vaike usually learned a thing or two. Vaike relaxed a tiny bit inside. If she was in the mood to make one of her speeches, her problem couldn't be too bad.

Miriel was wrapping up, it seemed. "Ultimately, after the consumption of ginger seemed to ease my symptoms, I came to one nigh-incontrovertible conclusion—my expulsions were the expression of _nausea gravidarum_." She stopped in her stride and gazed at Vaike. "I am enceinte."

"Huh?" Vaike grunted.

"Was my statement polysemous?" demanded Miriel, "I am gravid! Parturient! Expecting!" She walked directly up to him, so close he could feel her breath on his chest. "Vaike, I am with child!"

What Miriel said settled in Vaike's mind for a second, then Vaike wrapped his wife in a enormous hug. "That's freakin' awesome!" he yelled, and frankly, he might have gone out into the town yelling his exuberance had something else not occurred to him. "Wait, so why were ya cryin', then."

"Well," said Miriel, "the changes in body chemistry that occur with pregnancy occasionally result in emotional vulnerability..."

"Yer lyin' again."

Miriel sighed. "Just so. In actuality, I was thinking about Laurent."

Vaike grunted in response. Laurent had stayed with his newly rediscovered parents for only long enough for them to get settled in their new home, and then had headed off for parts unknown with his girlfriend. Miriel and Vaike did receive letters from him, which was more than some of their old teammates got, but their frequency was hurt due to the difficulty couriers had reaching their small town. In addition, Laurent's missives tended to limit themselves to scholarly information, rather than friendly chat.

"I gotcha," said Vaike, "when this kid gets born, suddenly there's two Laurents runnin' around, right?"

"Perhaps. Pangenesis is a difficult process to predict."

"Pange-what now?"

"The process through which traits are passed from parent to offspring," answered Miriel. "Actually, my mother theorized a different process involving domination and recession that she tested with beans, but tragically, those results were lost-"

"Hon, careful."

"—in the conflagra—ah! Did I begin to descant?"

Vaike nodded. "If that means 'babble,' you sure did." Recently, Vaike gave Miriel reminders to stop if she launched into endless digressions too much. This had been, in fact, Miriel's idea; she was attempting to improve herself in much the way Vaike attempted to raise his mental acuity.

Miriel blushed. "Pardon. In any case, the dilemma is as such: when my child is born, taking as fact that he will be identical to Laurent—not a guarantee, most certainly, but reasonable—how should we approach the issue of naming the infant?"

Vaike chortled. "That's all? What to name him?"

"It is not a jest! Laurent is, for all intents, our firstborn offspring, and—all things being the same—we would have christen this child Laurent as well. Currently, we are in a scenario unprecedented in human history—we know the name we would have given our child!" Miriel sat down. "I acknowledge that this sounds piddling, but it's not! Do we commit disservice against the older Laurent by naming this child the same? Would we bestow on this child unreasonable expectations? Would it create a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein the younger Laurent, consciously or unconsciously, decides to behave as his older self does?

"And yet taking the alternate course of action engenders similar problems! Does choosing a different name somehow dishonor the deceased Miriel and Vaike from the alternate timeline? Is there, in fact, any rational reason for bestowing a different name, the mere rationale that we don't wish to utilize a name we've previously, in another continuum, conferred?" She sat down, and set three fingers against her head. "Really, the crux of the quandary is that I desire to give him the cognomen of Laurent, but it simultaneously feels wrong; it is a problem that logic seems incapable to best."

"Man, no kiddin'" muttered Vaike, retaking his seat. "It's makin' my head hurt."

Miriel looked up at him, a single tear running down her face. "Vaike, do you recall why I intially became infatuated with you?" she asked.

"I 'unno. Were you drunk?"

"Conceivably. However, what I allude to is your implacable, impeccable instinct. Thusly, I ask—what do you think we should name him?"

Vaike stood, walked around the table and embraced Miriel so quickly and so tightly she gasped. "Miriel, my instinct's tellin' me you're gonna be the greatest mom ever no matter what the kid's name is.

"But if'n you're actually asking, I think Laurent's gonna wind up just as good as the one we already know."

Miriel looked deeply into her husband's eyes. "I love you," she breathed, and kissed him. The house, for a moment, laid in silence.

The stew slowly cooled on the table, but neither of them cared.


End file.
